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Comment by ho_schi | Hacker News Reader

That is one of the many reasons why use ThinkPads.

    * Maintenance Manual with explosion diagrams and step-by-step guides
    * Short guide videos for important parts (terse and helpful, very good hidden on Lenovos Website)
    * OEM-Parts from Lenovo itself or dealers

Side story. I ordered a X13 Gen 3 (because the new reverse notch is “meh”) AMD (because Intel is “meh”) but the HiDPI was not selectable. So I ordered it without HiDPI, ordered the HiDPI display and cable (yes!) from the repair website and replaced both :)

And the best thing…it was shipped with Linux and it reacted “Oh. Should I turn on scaling?” :)

Probably not was Lenovo intended but in the end both sides are happy.

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I get how this is helpful for hobby hardware, but the last time I had a problem with a Lenovo, I sent it to the on-site authorized repair depot (my employer had a special gold plated contract with them), who couldn't replace it because it needed a replacement display cable they didn't stock. They diagnosed it, and sent it to Lenovo, who said it would take 30 days to replace the cable.

I bought a cheap desktop in the meantime, which still works fine, ten years later.

When the laptop came back, Lenovo diagnosed it "no fault found", and didn't replace the faulty cable. Not only was the display still intermittent (due to the bad cable), but their technician removed and then improperly installed the insulator for the backlight's high-voltage transformer, so it was painful and unsafe to touch the laptop if the display was on.

Compare this to Apple, where I drive into any big city, hand them the broken shiny thing, a bag of money containing about 10% its retail price, and it Just Works when they hand it back to me (almost always on the same day).

Maybe Lenovo can repair their own stuff these days? I haven't observed this anywhere I've worked since.

(My evidence that they can't fix their stuff is that there is usually a pile of broken Lenovos in the back of the IT office.)

Anecdata: if you need a Lenovo repaired and you’re covered for onsite service, have them come to you.

I had a similar experience with sending an X1 Carbon to Lenovo’s repair center: “No problem found”.

When I called to complain, I was told they recommended on site service over sending machines in. The repair tech was prompt, pleasant, and skilled. The machine was fixed in 30 minutes.

So always money fixes the problem. Either apt in-house personnel, service-contract or learning it yourself.

But in both cases - well all - this shall be part of the device pricing. We had here also a fan with fan (within first year), promptly picked up, promptly replaced.

> a bag of money containing about 10% its retail price

In my experience that is a low value. It has always been repair this one, or buy current model for 20% more than repair cost.

> a bag of money containing about 10% its retail price

...or, if you bought AppleCare and it's still within that time frame and not an egregiously obvious user error situation, no (additional) money at all.

Lenovo once told me that extreme image persistence on the display was "normal" and there was nothing to repair. You could display some sensitive information on the screen, lock the screen, and still be able to read the previous information on the lock screen around 3 minutes later.

Yep. The IPS-Panels from ~ 2012 are an improvement over TN-Panels but should have never shipped. I was told that replacing it by a display from another OEM could fix it.

PS: Most manufacturers have multiple OEMs for batteries, displays, WiFi and so on.

I just finished reading the comment thread for the "Snowden leak: Cavium networking hardware may contain NSA backdoor" news item and so security and privacy issues were at the forefront of my mind.

So, when I read your comment about "That is one of the many reasons why (we) use ThinkPads." I think people need to be reminded about Lenovo's (POST IBM SALE) controversies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenovo#Security_and_privacy_in...

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